Question

For much of the twentieth century, the philosophy of language was dominated by descriptivist theories of reference, championed most notably by Gottlob Frege and Bertrand Russell. Descriptivism posits that the meaning of a proper name is essentially equivalent to a synonymous definite description or a cluster of such descriptions. Under this view, the name "Aristotle" refers to a specific historical individual solely because the individual uniquely satisfies the descriptions associated with that name by the speaker—such as "the teacher of Alexander" or "the author of the Nicomachean Ethics." Consequently, if it were discovered that no single individual fulfilled these descriptions, descriptivism dictates that the name would lack a referent entirely.

In the 1970s, Saul Kripke fundamentally upended this consensus with his causal-historical theory of reference. Kripke advanced several arguments against descriptivism, most notably the epistemological argument: if "Aristotle" simply meant "the author of the Nicomachean Ethics," then the statement "Aristotle wrote the Nicomachean Ethics" would be an analytic truth, knowable a priori. Yet, it is clearly an empirical historical claim that could, conceivably, be proven false without changing the meaning of the name "Aristotle."

To replace descriptivism, Kripke proposed that reference is established and maintained through a causal-historical chain. In this framework, an object is initially given a name in a "baptismal" event—often involving a direct physical demonstration of the object. Once this initial link is forged, the name is passed from speaker to speaker through communication. Crucially, for subsequent speakers in the chain to successfully refer to the original object, they are not required to possess uniquely identifying, or even accurate, descriptive information about the referent. The only requisite condition for successful transmission is that the speaker receiving the name intends to use it to refer to the exact same entity as the speaker from whom the name was acquired. The reference is secured by the social and historical continuity of the communicative chain, bypassing the need for the speaker's internal conceptual accuracy.

Based on the passage's description of the causal-historical theory, which of the following is most strongly implied about a subsequent speaker in a communicational chain attempting to use a proper name to refer to a specific entity?